In January 2021, I moved my websites from Siteground to Cloudways as I stepped up from shared hosting to a managed virtual private server (VPS). This immediately improved site performance; however, over the last few years, as I’ve worked on my homelab and used Docker containers, I realized the “managed” part of my VPS was limiting its potential.
The advantage of a managed VPS is that the provider (Cloudways in my case) handles the hardware and a set of OS-level tasks like updates, security patching, control panel management, monitoring, backups, etc. I could focus on the content while they focus on the infrastructure. Naturally, this comes with a markup in price for their services.
In an unmanaged VPS setup (like my new Hostinger account), I’m responsible for all the tasks above. Since my VPS runs Ubuntu (the foundation for all my homelab servers), I’m already very comfortable doing these tasks. The added benefit? More flexibility through root access… and for a lot cheaper!
This week’s PHP2Shell vulnerabilities reinforced why I want more control over my hosting environment. Two flaws in PHP’s memory handling could allow someone to execute code on a vulnerable server without logging in, prompting many organizations to take their websites offline while applying emergency patches. Since the problem lives in PHP itself, updating WordPress and its plugins isn’t enough. Moving to an unmanaged Hostinger VPS gives me direct control over PHP updates, container deployments, firewall rules, and private access through Tailscale.
I spent yesterday evening migrating my core websites and applications to the new platform, but I will spend 1-2 more weeks with Cloudways to ensure there are no unforeseen hiccups. I’m already loving all the freedom to do pretty much anything I want on the server. But with great power… comes great responsibility… and if anyone is going to inadvertently crash a production environment… it’s me. 😅
Also, shameless referral plug (we each receive a 20% discount):
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